No, We’re Not Quite There Yet: Taiwan’s Road to Gender Equality

The inauguration of President Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s first ever female president, speaks to the great leaps that Taiwan has made over the last few decades towards gender equality.

Indeed, there are now more Taiwanese women in the job force than ever before, increasing from 38 percent in 1978 to around 51 percent in 2014 according to a Gender Inequality Index published by Taiwan’s Statistical Bureau in January. Women’s educational attainment has skyrocketed from the previous generation and the wage gap has lowered considerably over the last couple of decades. The end of martial law in 1987 heralded a new era for women in Taiwan, as more women began participating in politics and social movements. Now, with nearly 40 percent of the Legislative Yuan being female lawmakers, the Taiwanese government appears poised to do even more for women at the national level. Reinforcing this idea, at a forum during Woman’s Day, Tsai told the audience of young women that her administration was going “to overturn” gender stereotypes and build a “gender-friendly” Taiwan.

However, there is a darker side to whatever optimism the new administration may have about gender equity in Taiwan in the next eight years. In Taiwan, the real problems of ingrained chauvinism and the gender stereotypes that continue to exist will not easily be eradicated by government policies alone. These gender biases run deep, contained within the Confucian doctrines that permeates throughout East Asia and has festered like a tropical ulcer immune to the reality that women are also equal human beings.

The recent case of the curfew at the girls’ dorms of Taiwan’s Fu Jen Catholic University proves just that. There are laws that prevent schools from discriminating on the basis of gender or gender identity. Yet, up until early June, female students were subject to a midnight curfew at the university’s dormitories — while male students were not. For years the school administration, spouting paternalistic self-righteousness, has remained unwilling to admit the policy as discriminatory, insisting that the policy was simply protecting female students from harm.

Cases like these show that the optimistic statistics mentioned earlier hide the fact that Taiwan’s patriarchal society still maintains ownership of women and their bodies. Sure, the society no longer subjects women to a bound-footed life of endless childbearing, but some men in Taiwan still believe they can dictate how women should look, when they may or may not have children, and even with whom women should be sleeping with.

There’s a clear set of expectations set and overseen by men for how women should look in Taiwan. Just tune in to local television or open a newspaper, or pick up a magazine. The largely male-owned-and-led mainstream media in Taiwan remain extremely superficial in their coverage of women‘s “issues” by focusing on pushing products or giving styling advice. Fat shaming of women is still oftentimes considered comedic material on talk shows. News features on kawaii female employees at McDonalds are a thing. When President Tsai Ing-wen was a presidential candidate, there was a point last year when the local media and Taiwanese netizens took the time to compare her appearance in a Time magazine photo to that of wrinkled green Star Wars character Yoda, dismantling her looks rather than her policy ideas.

Furthermore, certain state policies reinforce some of the gender biases rather than work to eliminate it.

While abortion exists in Taiwan, it exists with many caveats. As an associate professor at Taiwan’s Asia University pointed out in a study published nearly a decade ago, Taiwan’s Genetic Health Law, passed in 1984, provided for legal, conditional abortions with the intention of curbing Taiwan’s population growth. It was never about women’s reproductive rights.

Under the Genetic Health Law, husbands, parents, as well as doctors, have the authority to determine whether a woman is entitled to a legal abortion, giving control over women’s bodies to someone other than the women themselves. This added qualification of needing to notify a husband or a guardian in order to obtain an abortion was a rule that the US once held as well, until the US Supreme Court overturned this policy in 1992 to protect the rights of women in abusive relationships. Taiwan, in retaining such a policy, basically gives men veto power over a woman’s decision about what to do with her body when she’s the one directly impacted by the baby. A recently released survey reveals that mothers in Taiwan continue to bear the brunt of the child-rearing responsibilities even as many choose to stay in the workforce, making it all the more unjustifiable why women are not given complete authority over when to have kids.

Men don’t stop there when offering their unsolicited two cents on how Taiwanese women should look and act. Taiwanese women are sometimes derided for dating or marrying western foreigners; comments on these mixed-race relationships don’t just end at putting down the foreign man but also include suggestions that the woman is herself easy or grossly flawed in some way. For instance, during a Taiwanese man’s verbal onslaught of one such couple on the Taiwan metro last November, he was videotaped not only calling the foreign man “trash” and “ugly,” but also calling the woman “Taiwanese trash” and a “whore.” Terms like “西餐妹” (Western-food-eating woman) are abound on Taiwanese social media and traditional media alike, adding to the litany of online buzzwords like 風騷 and 騷妹 (both terms are the equivalent of “slut”) that do nothing good for Taiwanese women. Many of the posts or articles using this term paint an ugly portrayal of the women, whether it’s about the women’s alleged feelings of superiority towards other Taiwanese, or disapproving the women as promiscuous.

The West’s imperialist history of atrocities and unwelcomed cultural and political imposition naturally makes people elsewhere in the world resentful. Here in Taiwan, the undeniable privilege that Caucasian foreigners receive, and the preferential treatment they’re given, has allowed resentment to ferment. For instance, foreigners earn around double the average salary in Taiwan by teaching English (it’s not uncommon for cram schools to offer English teachers about NT $70,000 a month, while the average monthly salary in Taiwan is NT $39,000 according to the Ministry of Labor), even when they have little to no experience.

In a twisted effort to feel better about their disadvantageous social standing, some Taiwanese men perpetuate the illusion of their superiority over women. By demeaning women in intercultural couples, they are trying to feel better about not “acquiring” those women in classic sour grape jealousy — which further demotes women to mere objects that could be simply won over, akin to a trophy that somehow allows local men to gain access to some of the resources and privilege owned by western foreigners. Depicting women as “sluts” who allow easy access to foreign men robs Taiwanese women the respect and autonomy they deserve when it comes to choices they make in their personal love lives.

In Taiwan, we can laugh off a remarks made by Chinese commentators about how President Tsai Ing-wen is an inadequate leader because she’s unmarried and childless. But not only should it be a somber reminder that a male Taiwanese politician said nearly the same thing during President Tsai’s presidential campaign, but also that there are deep and entrenched expectations about women’s “place” here in Taiwan’s society that we choose to ignore, or even help perpetuate. When a woman is expected to look a certain way, to give birth at a certain time or date a specific type of person, she does not enjoy gender equality.

Calin studied political science and environmental studies at Wellesley College. She was born in Taiwan but has since then lived in more cities than she can count on one hand. Now based in Taipei again, Calin writes for a living.

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Bakarrik Azeri

Fascinating article and something I also became aware of quite quickly after watching about 10 minutes of shows like 國光幫幫忙，康熙來了，and so on. Me and my Taiwanese fiancee (she’s aware of these cultural tropes, but even these shows push new levels) were pretty shocked at just how incredibly sexist, misogynistic and moronic these shows are.

Take 國光幫幫忙 for example, where a recent episode’s main content featured one of the brainless hosts (who are all in their late 30’s/early 40s!) dressing up as an old “Emperor” and getting University Students (female, of course) to do sexy dances in front of them, so the “Emperor” can rate them. 40+ year old men, literally spending 45 minutes filling airtime with 哎喲，好幫，好看，and ogling teenagers anywhere else would kick up a media frenzy and end with the entire show being scrapped, yet somehow this is still “a thing”, as you say.

A well researched and nuanced article- it covers a lot of aspects and examples, and has a great analysis on the toxic recuperation of masculinity. It makes an important intervention among the dialogues around President Tsai and Taiwan’s “new” political era.

I would also be interested to explore an understanding of class alongside gender. While the article does well to refute the idea of a post-feminist Taiwan, I’m still left wondering- what are the impacts on working-class Taiwanese women, and what issues are important to them (wage gaps, gendered divisions of labor, etc)? How can we reveal the gendered contradictions of Taiwan alongside class lines? I think the article does a great job at addressing the socio-cultural forms of patriarchy and gendered violence, but it might be interesting to further connect these to class and socio-economic lines.

Secondly, I’m wondering if there’s more to be said about the relationship (which the article appropriately hints at!) between an influx of western capital and labor to class and gendered violence. How might we also read the position of the Taiwanese woman as impacted by the influx of privileged, western labor and capital (e.g. thinking about the income figures you mentioned)? How might western privilege and capital enact its own version of gendered violence, which functions with and alongside gendered violence perpetuated by Taiwanese men?

Mike Fagan

“…a great analysis on the toxic recuperation of masculinity…”

Relax! It’s only toxic for SJWs in the victimhood industry. It’s not like it hurts anybody else.

Mike Fagan

This article should have been better.

Let’s get the niggly little things out of the way with first…

****

It’s poorly written and is riddled with WTF moments. She writes about “Confucian doctrines” containing gender biases but then she cites the Fu Jen Catholic school fiasco as an example. Eh? When the fuck did Catholicism become a Confucian doctrine?

She says that men place expectations on women to look a certain way on the basis of TV news shows’ “female content”, when – really – we all know that this is just the content that gets (female) viewer ratings. The same thing explains why the first four or five floors of every department store in Taiwan is women’s shoes, dresses, handbags, make-up etc – that’s just what women like to spend their money on, and women spend more time and money on their appearance than men. Hence.

And if these expectations are all dreamt up by men and imposed on women in a fit of sweaty misogyny, then why is it women have far more choice of what they can wear to work than men have? For example, when it’s 34 degrees outside a woman can choose to wear a skirt to go to the office, but a man cannot choose to wear a pair of khaki shorts.

Oh and I’ll mansplain this to her now so we don’t have to take this as a reflection on Wellesley College, but when you use the verb “to permeate”, then the adverb “throughout” is redundant. So she should have written “Confucian doctrines that permeate East Asia.

****

Now the part that really got up my nose was this…

“The West’s imperialist history of atrocities and unwelcomed cultural and political imposition naturally makes people elsewhere in the world resentful. Here in Taiwan, the undeniable privilege that Caucasian foreigners receive, and the preferential treatment they’re given, has allowed resentment to ferment. For instance, foreigners earn around double the average salary in Taiwan by teaching English (it’s not uncommon for cram schools to offer English teachers about NT $70,000 a month, while the average monthly salary in Taiwan is NT $39,000 according to the Ministry of Labor), even when they have little to no experience.”

How much does she, Calin Brown, get paid for regurgitating Salon-style politically-correct tropes? More or less than NT$39,000? If she gets more, then it’s because there aren’t that many politically correct hacks in Taiwan writing in English, hence a greater than average market value. (Though I find it hard to believe people like Calin Brown aren’t already ubiquitous). Similarly, foreign English teachers get paid more than their Taiwanese colleagues because there are fewer of them, while Taiwanese English teachers are much more common.

But about those numbers… although some schools may offer NT$70,000 per month (though that is likely the Taipei figure for a cram school or a figure for government funded schools), most will offer between NT$40,000 and NT$60,000 per month depending. And furthermore, many schools do not offer foreign teachers a monthly “salary” but rather wages calculated on how many hours have been worked; a school may then violate the terms of the foreign teacher’s contract and the terms of the labour regulations by giving the foreign teacher fewer than the stipulated number of hours. So sometimes the foreign teacher might actually earn less than his or her Taiwanese colleagues. When a foreign teacher goes to the Labour Bureau to complain, the Labour Bureau might promise to fine the school and then, mysteriously, fail to do so. They will however immediately fine a supermarket branch (over NT$300,000) whose manager refuses to hire a transgender person. So if we’re looking for bias, then there is that.

****

Now aside from her apparent ignorance of economics, or the nasty details of the English teaching industry, she clearly has no sense of irony either. An “unwelcomed cultural and political imposition” is just precisely what political correctness is. It attempts to teach us that our existing inclinations and preferences are “gendered stereotypes”, “social constructs” and “tools of oppressive patriarchy” and other such nonsense, when it is far more likely that many of our existing preferences and practices are simply natural. They are more likely the result of thousands of years of evolutionary history and as such form part of our genetic inheritance. Perversely, it is actually the postulates and demands of political correctness that are “socially constructed” in the laboratories of “political science”. And the result is, more often than not, misery.

How many young Taiwanese women, who ostensibly have every reason to be happy (more personal freedom, no children, taking part in the workforce etc) are actually miserable? They go to work in offices where they are constantly under pressure (and often in conflict with other, older women) and go home crying to their boyfriends. And if not to their boyfriends, then to ex-boyfriends. How many young Taiwanese women who once believed that they could start up their own business or become a successful actress have failed and have since struggled to find purpose and meaning in life? How many of these women have lied to men and even to themselves about their own desires? Is it really so bad to imagine that actually, some of these women might have been better off getting married, leaving the terrors of uncertainty and conflict to the men to deal with and instead dedicating their lives to raising children? I don’t have the numbers, but whatever they are, I suspect much of this human misery is largely a consequence of political correctness.

There is nothing wrong per se with women having the freedom to do what they like. Yet that freedom necessarily includes the “gendered stereotype” option of getting married and having kids. It also includes the freedom to be “humped then dumped” by men who enjoy the same freedoms as women but whose looks and sexual options tend to last a lot longer than a woman’s do.